What would such a transition look like? Yesterday, the IEA and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) rolled out a new report laying out the investment path to reach a "low-carbon energy system" by 2050 and a complete phaseout of fossil fuels by 2060.

We've previously written about how long-term forecasts of clean energy by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) have been wildly, almost laughably low. Now, a new study by Oil Change International and Greenpeace finds the same pattern for oil companies' forecasts of renewable energy, and also for electric vehicles.

In sum: wind power is seeing soaring installations and plummeting prices, spurring economic activity and creating jobs wherever it goes. Not too shabby for this clean (e.g., uses no water, emits no CO2 or other air pollutants), inexhaustible power source.

A recent white paper by leading energy storage company Younicos (along with co-authors Panasonic and Xcel Energy) explains that energy storage technologies "have shown great promise as the 'Swiss army knife' of the power grid, capable of doing many things for many stakeholders."

With impressive and aesthetically pleasing structures like wind turbines and solar panels (see example by Trina Solar, below), this is especially true for the clean energy industry. That’s yet another reason why clean energy companies should be fully taking advantage of the image and power of the products that they are marketing by showcasing them to their audience in a video format.

The bottom line according to this survey is that - as polling has consistently found - there is broad, bipartisan support in the U.S. for clean energy scaling and for taking action regarding climate change caused by combustion of fossil fuels.

The question, as Tigercomm President Mike Casey asks, is "whether there is a way to make marcom turnkey for low-budget, small solar installers." According to Casey, "answering that question is falling to the marcom service providers."

A new study by the Grantham Institute and the Carbon Tracker Initiative demonstrates, in detail, why this is the case, and specifically how "ongoing cost reductions could see solar photovoltaics (PV) and electric vehicles (EVs) impact future demand for coal, oil and gas."

But how often do you hear from cleantech industry leaders, the people working in the industry or customers whose lives benefited from clean energy, about what all that means to them personally? First-hand experience tells us that there’s no shortage of challenges in this industry but too few are willing to share it.

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We agree with the conclusion reached by PV Magazine, that although growth in renewable power in the United States is increasingly driven by non-RPS factors, "[t]his does not mean that RPS policies are not important."

Here are some key points from a new study by the Brattle Group for NRDC, entitled "Advancing Past 'Baseload' to a Flexible Grid," which argues that far from being a problem, a higher share of clean energy is actually a great opportunity for a wide variety of reasons.

In sum, the future looks extremely bright for clean energy, and for cleantech more broadly. The question isn't whether these sectors will grow rapidly, but simply how rapidly they'll grow. On that, we'd argue that EIA is far too conservative (or pessimistic, if you prefer), while BNEF is quite possibly too conservative as well, although they appear to be much closer to the mark than EIA's typically bearish-on-renewables, bullish-on-fossil-fuels forecasts.

According to a new report by the Energy Storage Association (ESA) and GTM Research, the U.S. energy storage industry is on fire, having just "deployed 71 MW of energy storage in Q1 2017...up 276% from the 18.9 MW deployed in Q1 2016," and with a lot more growth on the way.

See below for video of Chris Brown of Vestas, keynoting the opening session on day two of WINDPOWER 2017, concluding today in Anaheim, CA. According to Brown, who is completing his tenure as Chair of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the next five years will be the "best five years of your life" for the wind power industry.

But wind and other major cleantech sectors rely on distribution-only or distribution-mostly strategies that leave most of the marketing communications (“marcom”) power of these tools on idle. This year, we looked at why that happens. A few external drivers explain a lot.